


You're a Flashback on a Film Reel (On the One Screen in My Town)

by LPSunnyBunny



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Autistic Bro Strider, Dream Bubbles (Homestuck), Hopeful Ending, Incest, M/M, Mentions of Feferi and Rose, POV Second Person, Reunion, Rooftop Sex, Selectively Mute Bro Strider, ennui
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:14:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26133301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LPSunnyBunny/pseuds/LPSunnyBunny
Summary: Bro in the dreambubbles. Sometimes he has visitors. Most of the time he's alone.Then, someone who matters arrives.
Relationships: Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider & Davesprite
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28
Collections: Sloppy Seconds 2020





	You're a Flashback on a Film Reel (On the One Screen in My Town)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xXApple_SauceXx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXApple_SauceXx/gifts).



> This fic follows my own personal Bro headcanons: namely, that Bro is autistic and selectively mute- and that Cal fucked with his head from the very beginning. He was trying his best as a guardian but had the deck stacked against him in every way possible.

You have no idea how long it’s been since you died.

It’s not like there’s any way to tell, really. You’re trapped in this space (which a passing alien had informed you oh-so-helpfully are called “dream bubbles”) and now you’re apparently a memory only you’re not sure that memories are supposed to feel like this, are supposed to be so vivid and real-feeling.

Memories are things with teeth and claws and haunting eyes. Memories aren’t sitting on a roof and staring at the sunset. It’s always sunset. Maybe it’s sunrise sometimes, but the sun’s at the place of sunset.

You try not to think about it. It’s surprisingly easy. For the first time in your life, closing your eyes and lying on your back under the sun doesn’t bring nightmares.

Instead, it’s a quiet, blissful darkness. You wonder if that’s what sleep was supposed to be like, when you were still alive. Comforting shadows instead of ones waiting to swallow you whole. Waking up feeling, well, if not _refreshed_ , then at least not worse than before.

You keep expecting to see the kid. You don’t know if you’re more disappointed when you turn around and he’s not there or relieved. If he’s not there, that means he’s still alive. That’s something. That means it wasn’t all for nothing.

You sit on the edge of the roof.

Your hand itches for your sword. Last you remember, it was impaled right on through your middle. It probably looked lame as shit. Hopefully, the kid didn’t see it.

He probably did. You can only hope that you made him strong enough to keep going. You suppose there’s no way to know anymore.

Sometimes you get visitors. There was the bubbly alien who tried to explain things. Her hair was so thick and wavy and long that you almost asked if it hurt her neck. She was a nice kid. A bit strange. You offered her a slice of cold pizza, which she accepted with a sharp-toothed smile.

(You can take as many slices as you like. You look away and look back and it’s back to the way it was, just a single slice missing. Mushrooms and beef and green peppers. Cold.

What you wouldn’t give for a pepperoni pizza right now, just for some variation.)

Her eyes were completely devoid of pupils. You wonder if you take your shades off if yours will be the same. You haven’t checked. You’re sure that someday you’ll get bored enough to check. Maybe you’ll be too chickenshit coward for the rest of your life.

Can’t know if you’re really dead or not unless you look, right?

You try not to think about how this might be eternity for you. The apartment, right as you left it. The sun setting. Sitting here forever.

You sit on the edge of the roof.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, if this is all there is. At least it’s quiet. It wasn’t quiet before. Before there was so much noise all the time, inside your head and outside the apartment. At least the apartment was quiet. Sometimes it wasn’t. That was sometimes okay. The kid could be noisy sometimes. Sometimes it was too much.

It’s always quiet, now. There’s no more noise. It’s just quiet. It’s nice.

One time you saw the kid’s friend pass through. It was a girl, the blond one. Real new age gothic witchy vibes. The two of you sat for a couple of hours and talked about all manner of things.

Well, she talked. You mostly listened.

You had a feeling she was searching for some kind of answer, but she never asked the question. You don’t know if she found what she was looking for, but she made you smirk in amusement, so that’s something at the very least.

You felt something when she left. Not quite sadness, but maybe a hint of wistfulness. Company is nice sometimes. Only sometimes, though. Even with her couple of hours, the noise was building up. Maybe she could hear it too- maybe not. You suppose it doesn’t matter overly much, since she left either way.

You sit on the edge of the roof and eat a slice of pizza.

You wonder if the kid’s making it through. Then you stop wondering because that makes you think of cold sweat and the shine of steel and whispers in your head and it makes your head spin uncomfortable.

The world never changes. You smash a mirror just to see if it will stay. It doesn’t. You don’t do it again, but sometimes you think about what’s showing in it. You.

After everything, it’s just you.

You sit on the edge of the roof and try to remember the night air. You think you can conjure it up, but it’s just a little hint and then it’s gone.

You sit on the edge of the roof.

You idly wonder what would happen if you try to leave the apartment. You don’t know how long it is before you try.

You get down to the street. It’s deserted. The quiet is eerie, but nice. You start walking. The paths you take are familiar. To the gas station. The pizza parlor. It’s all deserted. There’s nothing there for you. You can pick things up and bring them back to the apartment. You collect ten boxes of poptarts and go home.

You sit on the roof and eat a poptart. They don’t vanish when you turn your back. That’s nice. You can bring stuff home.

After three poptarts, you go back out. You turn to go down a street you don’t remember.

The street ahead is hazy, like watercolors. You step forwards, and forwards and forwards and the colors blur around you. You find yourself standing on the roof.

Hint taken. You aren’t leaving.

You sit on the roof.

It’s not so bad, here. It’s quiet. You can sleep whenever you want. It’s amazing. You feel rested for the first time in your life. You don’t dream.

Is that a being dead thing? Who knows. You don’t and you don’t have any way of finding out so you don’t bother to care.

You wander the streets and find the paths you remember, find the paths you don’t.

You sit on the roof.

You teach yourself how to juggle. You’ll never run out of ammo, after all.

Sometimes you find yourself missing your sword. You don’t think you’re getting out of shape- no matter how much you eat you never need to seem to do anything about it. You don’t feel any slower than before you died.

Most of the time you don’t miss it.

You sit on the roof.

Sometimes you mix music. Sometimes you listen to what the kid was working on. He’s got talent, that’s for sure- you find yourself listening to the tracks over and over. Most of them aren’t finished- some of them are a melody and that’s it.

You start messing around with them. Adding notes and beats and rhythms. Maybe you can make something new, here. That would be interesting.

The tracks don’t reset when you turn your back on them. You make backup copies of the originals.

You sit on the roof.

The sun never finishes setting. You start tossing things at it. Maybe it you can hit it you can get it to go down.

You stop throwing things after you realize it’s a waste of time.

You sit on the roof.

You eat an apple. A microwave bowl of mac n’ cheese. At least you have variety.

Do you even get hungry? You’re not sure. You’ve been eating by rote habit. You can’t remember the last time you ate a meal because you were hungry.

You try not eating.

You don’t get hungry.

That’s weird. You eat a poptart anyway. That feels less weird.

You sit on the roof.

You wonder what the kid’s doing. You haven’t seen him, so that means he’s not dead yet. That’s good.

You don’t want all your training to be for nothing. You hope that, after all these years, he’s strong enough to defend himself.

You get drunk. The gas station sells booze. You get drunk and stare at the sky. The colored sky that never changes. Eventually, you stop being drunk. You decide it’s not really worth it, and don’t drink again.

You sit on the roof.

The change comes in a flash of orange. You’re sitting on the edge of the roof, back to the sunset. You look up as your neck prickles and see an orange streak tumbling through the sky.

Another visitor, then.

You wait. The orange streak rights itself. Wings spread and flap. You watch as the kid approaches you. His poker face is destroyed, his motions fast and frantic and his expression clearly distressed.

There’s a familiar prickle in his stomach, your hands flexing as the urge to deliver a beatdown flares up. The kid needs to get himself under control.

You don’t do anything. The feeling ebbs. You’re dead. There’s nothing more you can do, here.

The kid stops in front of you. He’s hovering, a strange, slack edge to his expression. You look at him. There’s a throb in your chest.

“Hey, Bro.” The kid says. You give a little nod of greeting.

The kid hesitates. You wait.

“It’s good to see you.” The kid says softly. Sentiment. Sentiment, sentiment- Noise buzzes in irritation in the back of your mind. Sentiment is weakness. The kid can’t have sentiment. He needs to be strong.

You push it away. It’s not your place to think about now. You did your job. Those thoughts don't matter anymore.

It’s good to see him. There’s a fond tightness in your chest.

You eye him. He’s in the dream bubbles, so...

“You dead?” You ask, trying not to think about the stab that goes through you at the idea. You feel like your voice should be dry from not talking. It’s perfectly fine.

The kid shakes his head.

“No.” He says. “I... It’s complicated. I guess.”

You look at him. He looks at you. His poker face is completely gone.

You tilt your head towards the edge of the roof next to you. The kid takes the hint and sits down, his orange tail trailing over the edge of the roof next to your legs.

You sit and wait quietly as the kid talks. He stumbles over his words as he explains. Tells you how everything went to shit. How he went back in time to change things. How he succeeded- and how now he’s a part of the game.

You don’t say much through the whole thing. Noise is buzzing lowly in the back of your head, but it’s fine. It’s manageable.

The kid failed- but then he succeeded. He’s fighting, just like he’s meant to, and he’s strong enough to come back from mistakes. That means you were successful. You raised him to be strong. To do what needs to be done. The kid sitting next to you is proof of that.

He’s stopped talking. He’s lapsed into a nervous silence, waiting for your verdict.

He did good- and even with his poker face destroyed, he’s still strong enough to do what needed to be done.

Words have never come easy to you. You’ve always led with your fists when your tongue refused to move at all- and so you’ve always preferred actions to words.

So, for the first time in your life, you raise your hand, set it on his head, and ruffle his hair. He goes tense under your touch, a kind of fragile, desperate longing on his face.

You hope he understands that you’re proud of him.

You take your hand back and he follows after it. You let him slide into your lap, grip your shirt, tuck his face against your neck. He chokes out your name. You cup the back of his head.

Rules don’t matter here anymore. You’ve both done what you needed to do. You did your job and made him strong. He did his job and was strong enough to do what was needed.

So when he leans up and presses his mouth to yours, you don’t stop him. You curl your arm around his waist and hold him tight. For the first time in your life, the idea of touching someone doesn’t make your skin crawl. His mouth on yours is warm and soft and alive. You don’t know if your mouth is warm or cold.

He clings to you as his breath hitches. You hold him with one arm and trail the fingers of the other along his cheek. He catches it, presses his face to your palm, and shudders out a wet breath.

“Bro.” He whispers. You hum softly in response.

“Yeah?” You say, when he doesn’t say anything else.

“Can I- can we-”

You nod a little. The kid shudders in relief and presses in again to kiss you- and you wrap your arms around him tightly. You hold him close and stand up, stepping back from the edge of the roof. He clings to you.

You turn and go down to your knees. He lets you spread him out on the roof, lets you kiss him and touch him and he calls your name, calls for you, clings and holds you as you pull soft, desperate noises from his throat.

He squirms and trembles and arches under you, the sight of him strange in orange hue, but moreso familiar than foreign. It’s still the kid. He cries out and trills in a strange, birdlike, raspy voice, but it’s not unpleasant to hear. He shakes and shivers and his wings beat against the rooftop as you sink into him- moaning and sobbing like a child, falling apart underneath you.

You let yourself be careful. There’s no need to be hard, not anymore. You’re both done with your duty. You can be soft.

You cradle him to your chest as you rock into him, warm around you and so so desperate. He clings and claws at your back and moans, jolted-out noises that fall from his throat, hot and tight around you, desperate for more. You give him anything he asks for, touches, more, deeper, harder, kissing him when he begs for it. You cradle his face and touch his waist and ignore the strange feeling of his tail trying to curl around your ankle.

He falls apart underneath you, shaking- and you sink to the hilt and press deep and as you cum, you press your mouth to his and whisper his name.

Dave _sobs_.

You hold him as he shakes apart. The kid’s allowed to rest, now. He’s done. It’s all over for the both of you. He’s smiling, though, as he cries- he’s clinging to you and smiling and kissing your jaw and you let him.

“Come with me.” The kid says, in the aftermath, when the both of you have settled back into your own skins. You’re leaning against one of the big metal boxes for ventilation, the kid draped sideways in your lap, his arms around your neck.

You hum questioningly.

“I can take you from here. Jane can bring you back to life.” The kid says, an edge of uncertainty in his voice. “You can come with us. To the new world.”

You pause. Your first thought is that you don’t know if you should. You’re not sure you belong there. You were meant to raise the kid to survive, and he did. What more use are you?

But the kid is looking at you, clinging to you so desperately. His hands are tight on your shirt. You think about his hands in your hair. You think about how the noise that usually comes with other people is only the softest of buzzing now. Easily ignored. You think about how sweetly he fell apart underneath you.

He’s looking up at you with an uncertain, pleading edge to his expression. The longer you wait to respond, the more desperation is creeping in. It’s making your chest ache to see, so you reach up and cup his cheek.

You nod once and kiss him. He presses into the kiss, putting his arms around your neck with a relieved, shuddering exhale.

You don’t know what’s going to come down the road from here. You did the job you were created to do. Whatever comes next is new territory.

The kid is determined to stick by your side, though, and that’s enough.

You think, as you take his hand and rise to your feet...

..that this might be how _happy_ feels.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoy my writing, check me out on twitter at [@LPSunnyBunny](http://www.twitter.com/LPSunnyBunny)!


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